The European Union is facing today the greatest crisis since its creation. Brexit could mean not only the reversal of its steady enlargement-from 6 to 28 member states-but also the beginning of an inexorable decline leading to its disintegration. However, few today seem to recollect that it was precisely the British who were the first to promulgate the political culture which inspired the European Union's construction-democracy and federalism-and the first who tried to realise, in June 1940, a European federation on the basis of an Anglo-French union.This volume traces the fundamental stages...